OurResearch, formerly known as ImpactStory, is a
nonprofit organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
which creates and distributes tools and services for libraries, institutions and researchers. The organization follows open practices with their data (to the extent allowed by providers' terms of service), code, and governance. OurResearch is funded by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
, and
Arcadia Fund
The Arcadia Fund is a UK charity organization founded by Lisbet Rausing and Professor Peter Baldwin. Established in 2001, the organization provides grants on a worldwide basis focusing on numerous projects outside the UK. The primary focus of th ...
.
ImpactStory
ImpactStory is the first
open source, web-based tool released by ''OurResearch''. It provides
altmetrics
In scholarly and scientific publishing, altmetrics are non-traditional bibliometrics proposed as an alternative or complement to more traditional citation impact metrics, such as impact factor and ''h''-index. The term altmetrics was proposed i ...
to help researchers measure the impacts of their research outputs including journal articles,
blog posts, datasets, and software. This aims to change the focus of the scholarly reward system to value and encourage web-native scholarship.
It provides context to its metrics so that they are meaningful without knowledge of the specific dataset: for example, instead of letting the reader guess whether having five
forks
In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...
on
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...
is common, ImpactStory would tell that the repository is in the 95th percentile of all GitHub repositories created that year.
The metrics provided by ''ImpactStory'' can be used by researchers who want to know how many times their work has been downloaded and shared, and also research funders who are interested in the impact of research beyond only considering citations to journal articles.
Unpaywall
Unpaywall, begun as an interface for ''oaDOI.org'', is a
browser extension which finds legal free versions of (paywalled) scholarly articles. In July 2018, Unpaywall was reported to provide free access to 20 million articles,
which accounts for about 47% of the articles that people search for with Unpaywall. In June 2017, it was integrated into
Web of Science, and in July 2018,
Elsevier
Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...
announced plans the same month to integrate the service into the
Scopus
Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-l ...
search engine.
GetTheResearch.org
In 2019, GetTheResearch.org was announced as a search engine for
open access content found by Unpaywall, with
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
features to facilitate
discoverability Discoverability is the degree to which something, especially a piece of content or information, can be found in a search of a file, database, or other information system. Discoverability is a concern in library and information science, many aspects ...
.
Unsub
Unsub, previously Unpaywall Journals, was launched in 2019 as a
data analysis
Data analysis is a process of inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information, informing conclusions, and supporting decision-making. Data analysis has multiple facets and approaches, enco ...
tool for libraries to estimate the actual cost and value of their subscriptions.
The tool reduces
information asymmetry
In contract theory and economics, information asymmetry deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other.
Information asymmetry creates an imbalance of power in transactions, which ca ...
in negotiations over
subscriptions with publishers: in its paid tailored version, it allows to merge
Unpaywall
OurResearch, formerly known as ImpactStory, is a nonprofit organization which creates and distributes tools and services for libraries, institutions and researchers. The organization follows open practices with their data (to the extent allowed by ...
data about
open access status and expected evolution in 5 years,
article processing charge
An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors. Most commonly, it is involved in making a work available as open access (OA), in either a full OA journal or in a hybrid journal ...
s,
usage statistics and the libraries' own parameters (such as the cost of
ILL ILL may refer to:
* '' I Love Lucy'', a landmark American television sitcom
* Illorsuit Heliport (location identifier: ILL), a heliport in Illorsuit, Greenland
* Institut Laue–Langevin, an internationally financed scientific facility
* Interlibra ...
) to calculate various indicators including the cost effectiveness or net cost per use of a current or planned subscription (or lack thereof).
Unpaywall Journals was used in 2020 by the
SUNY Libraries Consortium to assist in the cancellation of their
big deal with
Elsevier
Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...
, which was replaced by a subscription to 248 titles, allowing expected savings of 50–70% over the baseline, or 5 to 7 million dollars per year.
OpenAlex
OpenAlex is an open catalog of scholarly papers, authors, institutions, and more. OpenAlex launched in January 2022 with a free API and data snapshot. It is considered a successor to Microsoft Academic which retired on Dec 31, 2021.
See also
*
Scihub
*
#ICanHazPDF
*
Library Genesis
Library Genesis (Libgen) is a file-sharing based shadow library website for scholarly journal articles, academic and general-interest books, images, comics, audiobooks, and magazines. The site enables free access to content that is otherwise p ...
*
Open Access Button
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
Unpaywall
Non-profit organizations based in Vancouver
Bibliometrics organisations
Academic publishing
Internet properties established in 2011
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